Porto Santo

A windy passage to Porto Santo

September 2012

Our cruising friends, a French family on their racing catamaran were impressed with the time it took us to reach our destination, knowing they left 5 hours before us and we arrived 5 hour after them.​They said " this Bavaria very good, or skipper very good". Details of the sailing were exchanged over a meal on Carpe Diem.

Quote from our book The most unlikely sailors.​"But the good lord was watching over us, as the VHF awoke by the authoritarian voice of the captain calling. "Yacht on my starboard side, yacht on my starboard side, this is the cargo vessel" and he declared the vessels name which I can't remember. I replied with our vessels name and persons on board. He continued, "do you know that the nearest land is 300 miles east?" I replied "thank you for your concern, we are aware of the weather and we are on the best point of sail, we are heading for Porto Santo." At this point we were experiencing winds of 38 knots on a broad reach, reaching speeds up to 10 knots on the boat log and the auto pilot engaged as the yacht surfed along the waves. The captain concluded "Good luck with your trip" and then altered course, heading slightly east of his original course.